Wilbert Plijnaar

(b. 12 February 1954, The Netherlands)

Koen Kalkoen

Wilbert Plijnaar began his career drawing for the Dutch Donald Duck weekly in 1972. He wrote and illustrated several stories with characters like 'Gus Goose', 'The Big Bad Wolf' and 'Little Hiawatha', and also illustrated several covers. In the mid-1970s, he and his writing partner Jan van Die took up scripting the 'Sjors en Sjimmie' comic for Eppo magazine. Together with artist Robert van der Kroft, they restyled this classic comic by introducing modern themes and focussing on short gags in stead of long stories.

In addition, Plijnaar contributed several other comics to Eppo magazine, such as 'Ko en Oom Jo' and 'Koen Kalkoen' and devised concepts for some series executed by other artists such as 'Max Laadvermogen' and 'De Asjemaarbekend Band'. Plijnaar and Van Die also wrote the script for the comic album 'Omni', that was drawn by Jan Bosschaert.

Plijnaar's Orange comic

In 1988 Eppo magazine was renamed Sjors en Sjimmie Stripblad and started publishing longer stories of the title comic. Because of the extra workload, the writing chores of the 'Sjors and Sjimmie' comic were divided amongst numerous co-writers and the artwork handled by Hein Haakman and Spanish studios like Comicup, Bonnet and Comicon, all under the editorial supervision of the Wiroja's, as Plijnaar, Van Die and Van der Kroft are often referred to. At the same time they produced 'Claire', a new weekly series for the Belgian women's magazine Flair. In 2001 Plijnaar eventually handed over his writing duties on this comic to Evert Geradts.

segment of one of Wilbert's scripts for 'Claire'

During the 80's through mid 90's Wilbert Plijnaar also contributed as background artist, concept developer and director in the animation department of the Dutch Comic House.

In 1995, Wilbert was invited by Warner Bros. to move to Los Angeles to work as animation storyboard artist. Over the years, he has contributed to several successful feature films, such as 'Quest for Camelot', 'Osmosis Jones' (Warner Bros), 'Ice Age' 1 and 2 (20th Century Fox/Blue Sky), 'Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius' (Paramount/Nickelodeon), 'Shrek II' and 'Over the Hedge' (both Dreamworks).